the year has passed. just a glance
and my reflection in a roadside puddle
dries up.
the year has passed. just a sigh
and my voice slowly fades into the cry
of the gulls.
the year has passed. just a signature
and it is as if half of my life has never
happened.
The caged bird owes no allegiance;
Bai Juyi, Losing a Slave-Girl
The wind-tossed flower does not cling the tree.
i once met wild geese
from the garden
of the floating cup.
we watched silently
as the gardener turned
the small pavilions
into cages and filled
the winding streams
with red and yellow.
the masons added
a new layer of figures
made of terracotta
to the wall around,
and hunters cast
their nets to curb
the birds’ freedom.
i once met wild geese
waiting by the wall
with no moon gate.
when i pass a couple on the street,
sometimes i glance at them to spot
that glimmer of male resentment
on his face. but really, what i see
in his narrowed eyes looking back
is insecurity. and then i wonder
what would happen if i were
a woman.
Be quiet then, and have patience.
Plato, Phaedo
we only have to walk about
until our legs become heavy,
and then we can lie down.
our first cry echoes the last,
not ours, because we have
already drunk a cup from
echecrates.
i look at my bookshelves with a sense of regret.
there are books there that i have not yet matured
to read, and books that have passed their time
before i could get to them, as silent as paper
remorse.
i was six when i learned to read
letters and i did not need to speak
ever again. so i thought, if i knew
how to read notes, i would not need
to hear, and if i knew how to read
braille, i would not need to see.
and even now, forty years later,
i am still pensive at the mention
of dawn in robe of saffron.
old actors play old people.
they know how to ask,
is realism a thing?,
and how to be amazed
that someone is listening.
old people are old actors.
they know that asking
is as scary as ever,
and the next morning
is just that, a morning.
and they know how
to smile.
if life is a fatal
sexually transmitted disease
then i am nothing
more than the sum
of my weaknesses,
injuries and ailments,
an absent clause
in evanescence.
and i am okay with that.
with one caveat, i am
a congenital liar.
i was born with a broken heart.
it gave me a rather dubious gift
of visibility, the label of unfitness
in an act of childish brutality. that
is when i learned what fear is,
the real one and the imaginary.
i was born with a broken heart
and believed that what is already
broken cannot be broken again.
then you came and i learned that
naivety is the original sin with
no forgiveness.
hidden pilcrow 